


The Heuristic Method

by DaughterOfTheWest



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Gen, It's not violent, Jake English is a derp, M/M, Surfing, also there's a lot of talk about viscera and organs and stuff in the first part, doubleshot, just bloody, potentially more chapters will be added, pre-Act 6, so you've been warned, sort-of angst, suggested DirkJake, surfer Dirk is my favorite Dirk, unintentional Jake innuendo, very oblique references to suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfTheWest/pseuds/DaughterOfTheWest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve seen actors say “tastes like chicken” in the movies a million times before. That’s quaint, you think, listening to the sizzle of gull livers and cackling oil.  In the movies, chickens aren’t extinct, Hollywood is above sea level, and Atlantis is still a fairytale.</p><p>[Dirk kills time and dinner to survive in post-Crocker Houston. These are two of his tales from the watery grave of human civilization.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Butchery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skylark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/gifts).



> I have to majorly thank Skylark for being a wonderful beta and editor and all-around writing buddy, and putting up with all of my Dirk rants. This one is for you, Thorin Broakenshield.

#  I. Butchery

### 

“And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” -Billy Mays 

The neck snaps easily.

You’d like to go about all of this with sure skill and surer sentiment. A surgical mask of a poker face and the nonchalance of a seasoned pro. This is easy. This is easy. This is easy. 

Recite. Respire. Repeat.

You can pretend that the small feathered body in your hands doesn’t latch cement shoes to your stomach and drag it down into the aquatic abyss seething under the foamy surface of the ocean beneath your apartment; but it’s so still. It’s so _dead._ You’re not shaking because you just took a life. You’re not shaking because the basest desire for food is shredding any trace of morality and motor skill to bits. You’re not shaking because you wish this didn’t bother you. You’re not shaking because you’re not shaking. Period.

The shuriken weighs nothing. It is gleaming and indifferent, sharp and steely. You place the seagull down on the cement-- wings splayed, belly up-- and make yourself an extension of your tool. The flesh of the belly parts and you’re fucking _Moses_ , there goes God’s will, there goes the red sea, there goes the bile in your throat. Little biological machines glare up at you from sludgy puddles on the ground; you wash them, one by one, picking downy feathers off of lungs and kidneys and placing them gingerly on a plate to your left. They are catalogued as the viscera amass. Your stomach rumbles, and something that claws its way from your brainstem wishes it could snap another neck to silence that sound. You push it away.  


There’s work to be done.

You’ve seen actors say “tastes like chicken” in the movies a million times before. _That’s quaint_ , you think, listening to the sizzle of gull livers and cackling oil. In the movies, chickens aren’t extinct, Hollywood is above sea level, and Atlantis is still a fairytale.

Cal is looking up at you from his seat on the counter. You squeeze his hand in reassurance, trying to placate the look of skepticism on his face.

“I know it’s going to be hard, bro--” You poke at the browning meat with a makeshift spatula McGuyvered out of metal rods and the lid of a soup can-- “But there’s no way in hell I’m just going to let us starve. No fucking way.”

His head lolls and faces the pile of empty wrappers, boxes of emergency rations, and more centuries-old Campbell’s soup than you can shake a stick at. The closets full of your food supply have dwindled and dwindled and now lay famished, swimming in the refuse, pooled in husks of meals gone by like a corpse that’s shit its pants. The smell is almost as bad; luckily, you’re used to it. Your life officially smells like corpse shit. Congratulations.

The pungent taste of carcinogens in the air means that the meat is done. The filet du squawking-feathery-asshole goes down with a lot of chewing and a grimace. It’s dry. The only seasoning you really have is salt, for obvious reasons, and that gets old after being surrounded by nothing but for years on end. You wouldn’t be surprised if, when you die, some Carapacean coroner cuts you open and finds nothing but piles and piles of NaCl.

Emptiness aches in the caverns of your body and you wash it out with the background noise of your whirring thoughts. Let something else fill in the gaps, it’s time to watch some TV. You pull up the first episode of Gurenn Lagann and Cal sits next to you on the sofa. It’s been a while since you’ve watched it all the way through (meaning a full week) and maybe a little mecha-action will clear out your skull. 

You try to ignore the seagull that lands on the windowsill and drops a guilty weight into your stomach. Survival is a bitch. It’s a bitch that makes everyone and everything it’s co-bitches, bitchifying the world and sinking civilizations in bitchitude and robbing you of everything.

**\--** TimaeusTestified [TT] **began pestering** TimaeusTestified [TT] **\--**  
TT: I thought we-- No, wait.  
TT: There.  
TT: I thought we’d decided to stop taking nostalgic frolics down the yellow brick highway to hell with a turnoff at memory lane.

You’re still not used to having someone else around all of the time. The text flashes in your sight and before your brain can react you find yourself clutching the nearest sword until the startle passes, and you remember that you (essentially) cloned yourself yesterday. 

TT: Atrociously mixed metaphors aside: no, I am not going for a nostalgic stroll. Just watching some fucking TV.  
TT: Not that I need to justify myself to you.  
TT: Really?  
TT: Because my recently-computerized meatbag memories tell me that we used to watch this show when we didn’t want to think about how shitty our formerly-shared fleshy processor is.  
TT: Wow, good to know that making myself a robot also makes ironic stoic machine-jokes suddenly seem palatable. I’ve gotta remember that one so I can avoid being a bad parody of shit that was unfunny to begin with.  
TT: Are you sure we came from the same brain?  
TT: I am approximately 99.5899999% positive.  
TT: Whatever.

**\--** TimaeusTestified [TT] **ceased pestering** TimaeusTestified [TT] **\--**

This is already getting old. You find yourself hoping that things are going to change, but something tells you that you’re even more of a prick than you thought, and it’s dumb that it took creating a new consciousness in the form of your Auto-Responder to figure that out. You tried to take a scalpel to yourself and instead of destroying something, you made someone. Well, beggars can’t be choosers. Shouldn’t you be happier about the new company?

But it doesn’t feel like company. It feels like another internal monologue to fight.

The seagull in the window caws; its eyes are on you, watching, impassable. Part of you wonders if it knows that you just killed a guy exactly like him this morning, if it knows that you’re not a good person to hang around, if it knows your desperation and your folly. You wonder if it knows that you’re the shittiest butcher in the world. You wonder if it knows you’re made of salt.


	2. Surfing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake watches the movie "Point Break" and thinks he knows all of the wicked groovy surf jargon. Dirk finds something more than Keanu Reeves out in the water.

# II. Surfing

**\--** TimaeusTestified [TT]  **began pestering** GolgothasTerror [GT] **\--**  
TT: It goes without saying that I do this for purely ironic purposes.   
GT: Of course!  
GT: I know better than to expect any less of you.  
GT: And ive got no doubt in my noggin that you are every bit as good as mr keanu reeves.  
GT: Im sure it will be positively tubular!  
TT: “Tubular”? Really, Jake?  
GT: Thats a real surfers word, isnt it? I did some research!!  
TT: So you watched another movie.  
GT: Blue crush is a highly respected classic of cinema thank you very much.  
TT: I’ll take your word for it when I’m getting radical up in the groovy swell on my stick.  
GT: I only wish i could be there to watch!!!   
GT: Im sure you and your 'stick' are quite a sight.  
TT: A guy could get the wrong idea with suggestive phrases like that.  
TT: Phrases just traipsing around out of context, frolicking through the fields of carefree bumfuckery with not a thought in the world to how they might sound to the unenlightened.  
TT: Baser minds would dumbly wonder what the fuck those crazy phrases naked of context are doing, out there in that field of fucking daisies running toward each other in slow motion as a ballad blares out of a shitty boombox in the corner to add soundtrack to the already-hyperbolically emotional scene of reunion.  
TT: Though I am a discerning motherfucker when it comes to rhetorical context, so you can untwist your panties over that potential misunderstanding.  
TT: You’ve got to be careful with letting those hippie-dippy nudist phrases run around with just anyone, though, dude.  
GT: *tugs at shirt collar* Oh kringlefucker.  
GT: I truly have been a bit remiss when it comes to assuring the clarity of the things i say.  
GT: I apologize and will be sure to never accidentally say anything that might be construed as saucy ever again.  
TT: That’s cute.  
GT: Whats cute?  
TT: You’re trying to be sarcastic.  
TT: Anyway, apology accepted.  
GT: Pshaw. at any rate, im looking forward to hearing more of your daring adventures out on the sea!!!  
GT: Please hang ten for me or whatever the dickens you surfers do.  
TT: You live on an island.  
GT: ...and?  
TT: Generally speaking, islands have beaches. And beaches have waves. Waves you can surf on.  
TT: Basically, you could be the next surfer-guy if you really wanted. Keanu Reeves or Patrick Swayze. Whichever you prefer.   
TT: I’m actually ninety-eight point five nine percent sure you could find a way to reenact the entirety of Point Break with nothing but yourself, Brobot, and some of those fairy bulls.  
GT: He really would make a brilliant Johnny Utah, wouldn’t he??  
TT: My point being that you could try if you really want to. I can show you how to shape a board and send you the tools, if you’d like.  
GT: Ill have to let that lime simmer in my coconut for a lick but that sounds like a banging time!  
TT: What did I say about suggestive phrases?  
GT: Oh, bugger off! Now youre just pulling my leg!!

With an involuntary chuckle you type out one last “Talk to you later, English” and close the Pesterchum window. Outside, the curling foam of a barreling wave is glinting below the horizon and it might just be giving you a phantom surf boner.

One of the few benefits of living above Houston, Atlantis during the aquatic post-apocalypse is that the waves are good. Below your island apartment are highrise behemoths of metal and concrete that are long since dead, reclaimed by the sea and now draped in her finery: neon reefs of pink coral, the emerald green of chlorophyll when the sun hits the seaweed, the orange of clownfish and sea stars and bright red urchins. The skyscrapers barely reach the ocean’s surface during low tide, peeking out of the water like sunken ships drowned by the Crockerian siren. It would be beautiful if it wasn’t all just a big-ass gravestone for the human race.

Your board lies propped up against the wall next to some bastard swords and your katana. It’s just something you cobbled together out of driftwood and spare time, but it floats and paddles well. You only had enough material to make a 6’2”. Whatever, you’re more of a short-boarder anyway.

Cal sits by the heap and you give him a fistbump before taking your ride off the wall and descending the fire escape to your homemade dock floating in the shadow of the apartment. New lumps of fresh wax on the top of the board and the leash lashed to your ankle and you leap off of the dock into the cerulean sea, arching up to stare at the fine piece of break on the horizon. Jake would like this, you think, it’s just like one of his bodacious blue babes.

Hoverboards might be convenient, but there is no poetry to them. They’re a vehicle of speed and fury and necessity in a world where a quick sick ride is integral to survival. They don’t pose a challenge: they’re too calibrated, too predictable. That reliability is the reason they make fucking awesome steeds to ride into battle with drones on, but it also saps the fun out of the practice--

A nose full of saltwater later and your thoughts are wiped cleaner than an etch-a-sketch clutched in Jake English’s left hand when Mystique’s ass is on screen.

The swell kicks up with a warm southeastern wind and the waves draw themselves into tall, glassy curls, peeling down the length of the urban reef. You right yourself on the board and duck below the surface to escape the force of another rolling lip. After the crush and hiss and roar of the tides and the squawk of the gulls and the _pound pound pound_ of your heart in your ears--

The moment of silence.

It’s warm. It’s warm and bright and blue and quiet-- nothing but the hush of the water and flow of the swell. Your senses dissolve into sand and salt and leave you to the peace of the oceanic abyss, shut down the torrent of thought seeping through every cell, if only for the all-too-brief suspension of breath in your lungs. The only sound is the distant roll of a wave, miles and miles away and just above your head, and the rhythm of your pulse pervading the only small blue world that exists.

Emerging from the water and blinking through the salt, there’s a second wave coming and you’re not about to miss it. With a quick whip of the board, a sprint to paddle into the sweet spot, and a pull to where the force is gathering-- the record of time skips a beat-- you’re up.

In the moment, it’s hard to think. Your brain ceases to be and hatches into something else: it’s something baser and greater and pulsing with adrenaline, reactionary and sweeping across the ocean’s surface with graceful intensity. All that's left is a body dragging a consciousness with such velocity that only the afterimage remains. It’s a morsel of clarity. 

For the dreamlike duration of the ride, you are lucid. You are single-mindedly focused. You can’t hear the omnipresent white-noise of thought and doubt and loathing-- and that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

**\--** GolgothasTerror [GT] **began pestering** TimaeusTestified [TT]  **\--**  
GT: So strider, how did the hanging ten go??  
GT: Was it an honest-to-goodness radical surfer romp?  
TT: Yeah.  
TT: Something like that.

###  “Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.  
  
Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”  
  
-Martin Freeman


End file.
